In the text I call citation using \autocite, \textcite, \citeauthor and \citeyear.

As requested by the journal I tried to convert my bibliography into a \bibitem list. I went to check the .bbl file as advised online but the structure seemed really complicated and nowhere \bibitem was mentionned. I found online some method that I managed to make work in my case by creating a dummy .tex file:

Thank you for the thread. §Unfortunately it doesn't really help as my journal specify it wants the references with \bibitem structure and I dont think that's what the other code does. I did manage to convert my biblatex into bibitem but cannot deal with the reference in the text.... Any clue?
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Xochitl C.Jan 20 '14 at 9:19

This will create a file dummy.bbl in the bibitem format. Clean your initial main.tex of all biblatex stuff and append dummy.bbl. For convenience this will be called newmain.tex and should look like this:

I just saw, that you still have to (re)define any biblatex citations you use to match \cite. Of course most/all of the perks of biblatex are removed by all of this.
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Martin - マーチンJan 21 '14 at 3:18

Hi! thank you for the help. 2 questions: What does mean : biber --output_format=bibtex main[.bcf]? I think it's some code used while using Linux but I am using Windows and do not really understand what to do. Is there a way to redefine biblatex citations to match \cite automatically without having to go trought the text? I try renewcommand but it was giving me errors. Thanks!
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Xochitl C.Jan 21 '14 at 8:43

2

What tools do you use in windows? They probably come with a build in terminal editor. You may be able to run biber from the commandline, which you can get with cmd (search in startmenu). 2) Because you have to remove all biblatex stuff, the \*cite commands are not available, you have to define them with \newcommand{\autocite}[1]{\cite{#1}} of course any biblatex functionality is lost therefore.
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Martin - マーチンJan 21 '14 at 10:31

In support of the accepted answer, I just wanted to add a test file for reference.

Basically, a bibliography can be compiled either with "plain" bibtex, or with biblatex with bibtex backend, or with biblatex with biber backend. In all three cases a .bbl file is produced - but in all three cases the format of the .bbl file is different!

In this particular test file, there is no difference in (pdf) output between backends when biblatex is used - but there is a slight difference (e.g. quotation marks and capitalization in title, the "In:" ...) between the "plain" bibtex (left) and biblatex outputs (right, click for full res):